Sunday, August 29, 2010

Cuomo for governor: State GOP hasn't managed to field a credible candidate

Sunday, August 29th 2010, 4:00 AM

Let's cut to the chase. The Daily News endorses Democrat Andrew Cuomo for governor of New York.

There is no point in taking further stock of the candidates vying for the Republican nomination in next month's primary. Rick Lazio and Carl Paladino have been that awful.

This is a pivotal year for a state groaning under economic duress and crying out for leadership that will overhaul a government that's a dead weight on 18 million people - and corrupt to boot.

But hopes have been dashed that New Yorkers would have a choice between a Democrat and a Republican with robust competing visions and credible potential for delivering on them.

Repeat: Rick Lazio and Carl Paladino have been that awful.

Lazio's platform is a paint-by-numbers compilation of vows to trim spending, cut taxes and reform Albany. While the prescriptions defy argument, Cuomo covers the ground in fuller breadth and depth. He also speaks as if he means it.

Voters can be forgiven for failing to know that, like Cuomo, Lazio supports a local property tax cap and a freeze on state workers' wages. That's because Lazio has thrown substantive ideas to the wind in favor of demagoguery.

He has been shameless and shameful in exploiting passions over a planned Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero. Perhaps more than anyone, Lazio has degraded the debate over First Amendment rights and the facility's location - hardly a recommendation for the governorship.

It is legitimate to stand behind the sponsors' constitutional privileges, as Mayor Bloomberg has.

And it is legitimate to urge the sponsors to relocate in light of the deep sensitivities generated by 9/11, as Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has.

But it is illegitimate for a candidate to inject poisonous innuendo into a controversy that demands reason and accommodation, as Lazio has.

Most odiously, he superimposes the faces of Cuomo and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf on images of World Trade Center devastation in an ad attacking Cuomo for failing to probe Rauf's fund-raising.

The smear is plain. As Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan, Republican candidate for attorney general, put it: "No money's been raised yet, so I don't know what there is to investigate."

Then, too, there's Lazio's greater offense: In desperate hope of political gain, he is trading on imagery of the horror that united all America, profaning the sacred by violating the boundary that removes Ground Zero from the campaign trail.

Edward Mullins, president of the Sergeants' Benevolent Association, rightly indicted Lazio's show of dishonor: "I believe his actions are as irresponsible as they are reprehensible."